


saving the man in front of you

by gotham_ruaidh



Series: Gotham Writes for Imagine Claire & Jamie [118]
Category: Outlander (TV), Outlander Series - Diana Gabaldon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-16
Updated: 2019-05-16
Packaged: 2020-03-06 03:25:13
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 814
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18842650
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gotham_ruaidh/pseuds/gotham_ruaidh
Summary: Nurse Claire Beauchamp meets medical student Jamie Fraser in appalling circumstances. Together they find peace amid the horror.





	saving the man in front of you

**Author's Note:**

> originally posted at [Imagine Claire & Jamie](https://imagineclaireandjamie.tumblr.com/post/184897207973/prompt-what-if-claire-overheard-jamie-talking-to) on tumblr

Nurse Claire Beauchamp shakily drew a deep breath, leaning her head back against the wooden slats of the barracks-turned-hospital, eyes shut tight.

But it was no use. For the images were already burned into her brain.

People who were no more than walking skeletons. A macabre pyramid of emaciated, naked corpses piled up in the mud, that incredible, dreamlike day she had arrived with the Army. The barn piled twenty feet high with piles of clothes and shoes and suitcases and, chillingly, prayer shawls. Fetid air in the barracks where people were crammed together like animals, dying from typhus and dysentery and starvation.

They called it Bergen-Belsen. She called it Hell.

The mid-May breeze stirred the trees.

Four weeks since the British Army had liberated the camp on April 15. Just ten days since she herself had arrived, fresh from tending soldiers wounded in the final assault on Berlin.

The war was over.

But to the people she had come to know here at the camp – her patients, dying by the dozen as typhus swept them away – the war was just as fierce as it had ever been.

“May I?”

Claire didn’t even open her eyes. “Help yourself.”

The bench creaked a bit as a man – at least, he sounded like a man – sat beside her. He didn’t say anything for a bit – which was just as well, because Claire certainly didn’t feel like talking.

“Cigarette?”

She cracked her eyes open, finally looking at him.

Not a military man – for his brilliant red hair shone in the sun, not covered by an officer’s hat, and he wore no stripes on his shoulders. In fact, he wore the apron of a doctor.

“No, thank you.”

He smiled. “Ach, it’s just as weel – I dinna smoke. But at least it got ye to talk to me.”

Now she smiled. “You must think you’re _so_ clever.”

He pinched his thumb and forefinger together, and brought it to his forehead, doffing an invisible cap. “My mam always said I had a flair for the dramatic.”

She shook her head. “I don’t think I’ve even thought of laughing since I arrived here.”

He sobered. “Nor have I. Have ye been here long?”

She shrugged. “Ten days. But it feels like ten years.”

“I ken what ye mean. I’m a medical student in Edinburgh – a group of us came here last week.” He sighed. “I’ve trained for many things. But nothing could have trained me for this.”

A Jeep rumbled down the road, just visible from their spot at the back of the barracks.

“Are you able to sleep?”

“No.” He said it without hesitation, without shame. “You?”

“No.” Her reply was equally firm, factual, honest. “I feel numb.”

He smoothed his apron across his lap. “Have ye ever studied psychology? Dr. Freud and all that?”

“I haven’t. Why do you ask?”

“I took a course in my first year of medical school – the medicine of the mind, the professor called it. We learned that the brain is always trying to find patterns in the world around us. To make sense of everything. And that when someone is faced wi’ a trauma, over a prolonged period of time – their brain almost shuts itself off.”

“To protect itself.”

“Aye. For when the pain is too much, how else to go on?”

Somehow her hand had slipped into his.

For the first time in ten days, she felt something positive. Something hopeful.

“How do we go on? I’m not a witch – I can’t wave a magic wand to make it all better for these poor people.”

He squeezed her hand. “Do witches have wands? I thought only faeries did.”

That got her to laugh. She felt a bit guilty at first, surrounded by so much sorrow and death – but then he joined her.

Holding her hand tight.

Laughing until the tears came.

He looked at her, then. Wiped the tears from her eyes.

“We can’t make it better, can we?”

Now his smile was sad. “We can heal as much of the sickness as we can. Nourish their broken bodies. And that’s all we can do.”

She nodded. “A Major I worked under, when I was stationed in France – he said that you can’t win the war, but you _can_ save the man in front of you.”

He brought her hand to his chest. Rested it over his heart.

“Ye have done so much these last few minutes to save _this_ man.” He tilted his head a bit. “I’m Jamie Fraser.”

Her heart pounded along with his. “Claire Beauchamp.”

He raised her hand to his lips. Kissed it.

“I’d like to look at you for a bit, if that’s all right. So that it’s you I’ll see when I try to sleep. Is that all right?”

She swallowed. “Yes.” Knowing she would look at him, and do the same, and find peace.


End file.
